The Hundred Days (19 page)

‘No Pomone?’

‘Her eighteen-pounders are very well, but this is
no longer a matter of direct physical strength. We have already dealt with the
two dangerous heavy frigates and I have - at enormous expense, I may say - set
in train a series of measures that will rid us of several smaller but still
dangerous vessels repairing or nearing completion - brigs-of-war, corvettes,
three gunboats. Letting Pomone return to Malta with her companion seems
to me a master-stroke.’

Jack considered. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘We shall do
as you say. As soon as you have finished your account I will send it across to
Pomone, who will carry it to Valetta.’

A violent ten-minute downpour had cleared the sky
without much deadening the prosperous topgallant breeze: day was breaking fair
and clear in the east and looking southward at his companions he saw that
Cerbère had hoisted the French royal ensign. ‘Mr Rodger,’ he said to the signal
midshipman, ‘to Ringle: Send a boat aboard pennant, if you please.’

The young man had seen much great-gun exercise, but
he had never been in anything so very like action as this and he was still at
least three parts deaf, as well as stupid from lack of sleep. Jack repeated the
words somewhat louder, but the grizzled yeoman had heard the first time and he
had the hoist not exactly ready, but clearly evident.

‘Stephen,’ said Jack, ‘I do not mean to hurry you
in the least, but as soon as you have finished, a boat will carry it to Pomone.
Shall I send word too, stating our aims?’

‘It might be as well: just “it has been agreed
that...’

Yours will be a separate cover.’ He drew the candle
towards himself, melted wax, and sealed his brief account: as a matter of
course he wrapped it in oiled silk, thrust the whole into a sailcloth pocket,
sealed that too, and passed it over.

‘I wonder that so fumble-fisted a companion can be
as neat as a seamstress when it comes to parcels: or opening your belly, for
that matter,’ reflected Jack, watching him.

‘Use makes master,’ observed Stephen.

‘I never said a word,’ cried Jack. ‘I was as mute
as a swan.’ Ringle’s boat came alongside. The young officer received the parcel
reverentially, and Jack put his ship about, heading back to the coast with the
wind two points free, followed by the Ringle. As they passed those bound for Malta they exchanged greetings,
some formal, others, from the open gunports, facetious and even bawdy. The
Commodore had it in mind to observe an already ancient naval tradition and
throw out a signal consisting of book, chapter and verse: ‘Oh that my words
were now written, oh, that they were printed in a book’ was the quotation that
had been addressed to him in the Baltic by Admiral Gambier when he was very
slow with a return of stores; but before he could think of the references, a
truly heavenly smell of coffee and kippered herrings wafted along the
quarterdeck.

‘Mr Rodger,’ he said to the signal midshipman,
‘should you care to breakfast in the cabin?’

‘Oh yes, sir, if you please.’

‘My compliments to Mr Harding, and should be happy
if he were to join us.’

It was a cheerful breakfast, and copious, as Jack Aubrey’s
breakfasts always were whenever he was anywhere near a civilized shore; and his
present cook Franklin was an old Mediterranean hand, with a genius at shopping
in lingua franca, gestures, and cheerful repetition growing louder and louder
until the poor foreigner (Dalmatian in this case) understood. The kippers had
of course been brought from home, but the perfectly fresh eggs, butter, cream
and veal cutlets were from the island of Brazza itself and the new sack of
true Mocha from a friendly Turkish ship encountered off the Bocche di Cattaro.

Harding had been in the Adriatic with Hoste in 1811
serving as second in Active, 38, and since they could now see the island of
Lissa through the stern windows, on the starboard quarter, with very little
prompting he gave a vivid account of that famous action, one of the few
frigate-battles of the war, with ten of them engaged, besides smaller vessels,
illustrating the movements of the squadrons with pieces of crust.

Breakfast was necessarily late that day and the
very exact account of an engagement with so many ships in constant motion made
it later still. Favorite had only just run aground in shocking confusion when a
midshipman came in, and begging the Commodore’s pardon, asked if he might tell
Dr Maturin that Dr Jacob would like to speak to him.

‘I hope not to be a moment,’ said Stephen. ‘I would
not miss a single manoeuvre.’

‘Have I done wrong in calling you?’ asked Jacob. ‘I
thought you would like to see the first results of our conversations in
Spalato.’ In the bright sun flames could not be seen to full advantage, but the
great trail of smoke drifting west-north-west was very eloquent. ‘Bertolucci’s
yard, of course,’ said Jacob. ‘It had half-completed Néréide, a .

what is smaller than a
frigate?’

‘A corvetto.’

‘Just so: a corvetto. The men have not been paid
these three weeks and more... I believe I see French sailors trying to put the
fire out.’

‘Should you like to climb into that platform up
there, with a perspective glass?’

‘Not at all, not at all. Besides, there are our
morning rounds, and it is already late. Surely you have not forgotten young Mr
Daniel, your guardian spirit?’

So practised a body of men as the Surprises could
ordinarily fire a rapid series of broadsides without doing themselves much
harm, but this time, almost entirely because of levity and mirth, there were
three or four hands in the sickberth, some from rope-burns as they tried to
check the gun’s recoil, and some from getting in the way of the carriage
itself. The exception was John Daniel, the only true casualty: Captain
Delalande, like his opponent, preferred that his gunfire, however formal,
should make a great deal of noise, and he too had the charge rammed home with
wooden disks. One of these, flying out ahead of the wad, had struck poor Daniel
in the chest, breaking his collar-bone and making a great livid bruise.

 Stephen had
certainly not forgotten him; but later in the morning, with all the patients
dressed, bandaged and treated (in Daniel’s case with a comfortable dose of
laudanum), he was glad to be able to make his way into the maintop unescorted
as the frigate ran (or rather crept, the breeze dying on them) between
Sabbioncello and Meleda.

Papadopoulos’ yard on the one and Pavelic’s on the
other had already been destroyed: only a little smoke rose from the sail- and
rigging-lofts, ropewalks and blackened hulls. He stared fixedly at the southern
end of Sabbioncello, where according to his list there was a small yard
belonging to one Boccanegra: but as Boccanegra, a Sicilian, had a father-inlaw
of importance among the Carbonari and their sometimes very curious allies,
Stephen was not sure that his yard was part of the bargain. He stared with
increasing intensity as the frigate moved gently across the placid Adriatic,
focusing and refocusing Jack’s telescope, some remote part of his mind was
aware of the striking of eight bells, the assembly of officers making the noon
observation, the cheerful sound of hands being piped to dinner; and then at one
bell the fife’s squeaking out the expected but still very welcome news that
grog was ready.

The cheers and the beating of wooden plates on
messtables that greeted its arrival were still quite audible from far below
when a nervous ship’s boy in a bright blue jacket, nominally Dr Maturin’s servant,
nipped into the top and said, ‘Oh sir, if you please...oh, sir, if you
please...which Mr Killick bids me remind you that the Commodore, his honour, is
to dine in the gunroom and you are all filthy. Which he has powdered your best wig.’

‘Thank you, Peter; you may tell him that you have
delivered the message,’ said Stephen. He looked at his hands. ‘Not as who
should say filthy,’ he murmured. ‘But it is true I had forgotten.’

Although he led Peter a hard life, Killick had not
yet recovered the power, consequence or esteem that had been his before he
broke the horn, nor anything like it, either in the cabin or on the lower deck,
he could still point out, in a tolerably shrewish voice, that the gentlemen
were all assembled, that they were only waiting for the Commodore, and that Dr
Maturin’s clean breeches, his brushed best coat, and his newly-powdered wig
were on that there chair: there was not time to more than just sponge his face
in this here warm basin and how did he manage to get into such a pickle? ‘We
shall never do it in the time, oh dear, oh... dear.’

They did do it in the time, however, and five or
even ten seconds before the Commodore walked in, Stephen was already in his
place between Whewell and the master, his servant behind his chair, and Dr Jacob
opposite him. They exchanged a calm, unconscious look as the door opened and
the Commodore walked in. Everybody stood up.

‘Be seated, gentlemen; I beg,’ cried Jack. ‘I was
so very nearly late that I do not deserve such courtesy. For one who tends to
cry up timeliness more than faith, hope or charity it is a very shocking
performance. Absurdly enough, I was looking for my glass: I looked in every
conceivable place - no glass. But here is consolation’ - draining his admirable
sherry.

A chill fell upon Stephen’s heart: without leave he
had taken the telescope, and slinging it about his neck in a seamanlike or
fairly seamanlike fashion, had carried it up into the maintop. And there,
shocked by Peter’s news, he had left it, lying on a neat heap of studdingsails.
To cover his guilt he said, ‘We often hear of people
calling their daughters Faith, Hope, Charity, or even Prudence; but never
Justice, Fortitude or Temperance; nor yet Punctuality, though I am sure it has
its charms.’ He helped himself to soup, and the talk flowed on. Nobody said
anything particularly witty or profound or really memorable for foolishness but
it was agreeable, friendly conversation, accompanied by acceptable food and
more than acceptable wine.

 When they
had drunk the loyal toast Stephen excused himself: there ‘was something he had
forgotten’, he told the president, avoiding Jacob’s eye. There was indeed: but
he had completely overlooked the difficulty, for those unrelated to the more
nimble kind of ape, of climbing in tight breeches, buckled shoes, and a fine
long-tailed coat. In his hurry he slipped again and again, for the ship, now
almost becalmed in the lee of a headland, was rolling, wallowing, in a very
disgraceful and uncharacteristic fashion. Sometimes he hung by both hands, writhing
to get his feet back onto the ratlines, sometimes by one. He was in this
ludicrous posture, much disturbed in his mind, when Bonden came
racing up the shrouds, seized him with an iron grasp, wheeled him round to the
outboard side and at his faint, wheezing request, propelled him into the top,
where he gave him the buckled shoe that had dropped on deck. He asked no
questions, he gave no advice; but he did look very thoughtfully at the
Commodore’s telescope: he was, after all, Jack Aubrey’s coxswain.

‘Barret Bonden,’ said Stephen, when he had
recovered his breath, ‘I am very much obliged to you indeed. Deeply
obliged, upon my word. But you need not mention that telescope to the
Commodore. I am about to carry it down to him myself, and explain...’

‘Why,’ cried the Commodore, heaving his powerful
frame over the top-brim, ‘there’s my glass. I had been looking for it
everywhere.’

‘I am so sorry - I should not have made you uneasy
for the world - thank you, Bonden, for your very timely help: please be so good
as to tell Dr Jacob that I may be a few minutes late for our appointment.’ When
Bonden had disappeared, Stephen went on, ‘That dear
good fellow gave me a hand when a hand was extraordinarily welcome: I found
breeches and shoes a sad embarrassment. The truth is...’

He hesitated for a moment. ‘The truth is,’ he went
on with more conviction, ‘that there was something on the shore that interested
me extremely: I could not be certain of the object without bringing it closer,
so seeing your glass on its usual peg, and you not being in the way, I took the
perhaps unwarrantable liberty of seizing it and running aloft as fast as my
powers would admit; and upon my soul it was worth the journey. And, although it
is scarcely decent in me to say so, the liberty.’

All this time - and it was not inconsiderable, for
diffidence reduced Maturin’s ordinarily rapid canter to a hobbling walk with
frequent pauses - Jack had been examining his precious telescope, one of
Dollond’s achromatic masterpieces, with a jealous eye: but finding it quite
undamaged he said, ‘Well, I am glad you saw your object. A double-headed
Dalmatian eagle, I make no doubt.’

‘Do you see the blur of smoke over the headland,
somewhat to the left?’

‘Yes. It looks as if they were burning the furze on
the far side: though spring is an odd time of year to be doing so. Cape San
Giorgio, I believe. Have you noticed how foreigners can never get English names
quite right?’

‘Poor souls: yet I hope this name, though distorted,
may be a good omen. On the far side of that little projection lies the village of Sopopeia, with its chalybeate
springs; and in a deep, sheltered inlet let us say a furlong south of it, the
shipyard of Simon Macchabe, a sordid wretch, but one who was building a gunboat
until his unpaid hands laid down their tools. I believe they burnt the yard
some hours ago, and this wafting smoke, much diminished since first I saw it,
rises only from the calcined ashes.’

He was by no means sure how Jack would take this
form of warfare, and when the ship rounded the cape, opening Macchabe’s creek,
whose dismal blackened ruins Jack surveyed through his glass with his closest
attention before closing it and saying, ‘Whewell saw a newly-burned yard on the
coast of Curzola. It was not on our list, but that one over there is, and at
this point I should have looked into it, sending Ringle or the boats if
necessary.’